


Nate Ford Is Not a Very Nice Man—The Reforming of Nate Job

by crayonbreakygal



Category: Leverage
Genre: Drama, F/M, deep thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-19
Updated: 2018-07-19
Packaged: 2019-06-13 02:16:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15354021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crayonbreakygal/pseuds/crayonbreakygal
Summary: Nate has always thought that he is not a very nice man. Is this true or just something he's worked up in his mind to protect himself?





	Nate Ford Is Not a Very Nice Man—The Reforming of Nate Job

**Author's Note:**

> I've been watching the DVDs again with the commentary. John Rogers says on many occasions in the first season that Nate is not a very nice man. Is that Nate's perception or John's? Or possibly both? Did Nate always think that of himself or was it caused by events in his life that shattered his sense of self? I truly do not believe he was always the bastard that he was in season one. I think he thinks that way though and tries to make sure everyone knows it.

Nate Ford Is Not a Very Nice Man—The Reforming of Nate Job

Takes place pre-series and through season five

 

Nate Ford is not a very nice man. He never was. Maybe, maybe way back, when his mother was alive and, well, she could have protected him from his father, he could have been a nice guy.  That never happened though. That’s not his story, nor will it ever be.  His father was ruthless, uncaring, showing Nate that the only way to get anywhere in life was not to be a nice man.

School meant being nice if just to get to the next problem, the next class, the next teacher to brown nose.  If he could pull any of this off, if he could leave his past behind him and forget Jimmy Ford, then maybe he’d learn how to be nice.  But Nate Ford wasn’t nice.  That’s the main reason he got kicked out of seminary. He told them the truth and the truth hurts.  God may forgive him eventually, but the priests certainly didn’t.

Somewhere, somehow, he learned how to fake being nice.  Surely, you had to be nice to get a decent job.  But IYS didn’t want a nice man. They wanted a bulldog and a bulldog is what they got.  He and Sterling got along so well because neither one of them were nice men. They were ruthless in taking down the bad guys, even if the bad guys weren’t all so bad in the first place.  Retrieve the artifact, get the painting back, destroy whoever took it, even if it meant bending the rules a little.  In Nate’s instance it sometimes meant bending the rules a lot.  That’s where he and Sterling differed.  Jim Sterling hadn’t gotten the niceness beaten out of him. He was only immoral when it suited him.

Maggie wanted nice and Nate tried to play nice for so long with her.  That meant asking her to marry him, which in turn had him playing house with her, until the next job that was.  Their lives were hectic, he wasn’t around that much, so he only had to pretend to play nice for hours at a time.  That was easy.  It was convincing Maggie that he indeed could be a nice person, act decently when they went out, when he was home.  Mow the lawn, wave at the neighbors, look like he belonged. Only he never felt like he belonged. He only felt like he belonged when there was a gun in his hand and a piece of art up for grabs.  So why did “she” have to go and ruin it?

The she in which he was referring was one woman who really was not nice, unless she wanted something from you.  Sophie Devereaux could make a man bad with just the snap of her fingers.  She’d often wove a spell around Nate like she was a witch. He really, really wanted to be bad for her, with her, but he just couldn’t.  It was like there was this barrier up in front of her, a forcefield that shielded him from getting too close.  That didn’t mean he wouldn’t chase her, and possibly put her in jail if he could.  But he didn’t put her in jail. He let her go every single time.  Did that mean he was going soft?  Or had she entranced him into actually being nice to her?  He most certainly didn’t feel like he wanted to be nice to her. He sometimes wanted to crush her for causing him so much chaos and turmoil.  Because if there was one thing that Nate was, that was loyal. He was loyal to a fault. He always was and had always been loyal to those few people that stuck with him, even when he wasn’t very nice.  Being a bastard had caused him to lose more friends than to gain new ones. 

That’s when his thoughts made him stumble.  Since he was loyal to a fault, he could never succumb to her charms, even if they felt true.  He had made a vow to a woman who did not know his true self. That didn’t mean he could go off and do whatever he wanted.  He was faithful, to a fault. 

The ice began to crumble after Sam was born.  The day, the hour, that his son made his first appearance, Nate’s innate ability to be a bastard seemed to diminish exponentially.  He was the grinch whose heart grew too many sizes in too short a time.  Someone depended on him, loved him unconditionally for the first time in his life.  All the others were just window dressing.  This small human being thought that his father was the best thing in the world.  So Nate set out to prove Sam right.  He wasn’t perfect, he wasn’t always around Sam, but when he was, he was nice and fun and loved his son beyond measure. It made his marriage better, his work life calmer, and his life in general was almost perfect.  Sure, he was in a job that sometimes taxed his mind and body to go without sleep or food.  He sometimes just wanted to let all the criminals go (which he did on occasion). 

His boss was still more of a bastard than he was. There were still people out in the world that thought he was a jerk and would pay for whatever transgressions he committed.  It didn’t matter. He had his family now, one small boy that loved him like no other.

Then it all came crashing down.  His son was all that mattered in life, until the illness, the hospital, the doctors made him want to curl up and die himself. He couldn’t do anything. He could solve all the puzzles he had at work, fix anything that was asked of him, find any piece of artwork, retrieve any artifact without so much as blinking an eye. But he couldn’t make his son better.  Money hindered him from helping his son recover and when that ran out, he begged and pleaded Ian Blackpoole for help.  It never came. Rejected he was told.  His son meant nothing to the shareholders. His son meant nothing to anyone other than his father and his mother.

Nate had to bury his son on a Thursday. The sky wept that day, but all Nate felt was fury. Being a nice man had gotten him nowhere. He shut down, rejected his wife, told his friends to go away and drowned his sorrows in a bottle. God could kill him, but he wouldn’t do it himself. 

He needed money to slowly kill himself. Jobs weren’t exactly available to a drunk with no sense of right or wrong.  Rejections had become the norm.  They’d say yes, then suddenly, they’d say no without any explanation. Nate had a theory that Ian had something to do with it since Nate had attempted to break his nose.

That awful day in Chicago changed everything.  He could make a quick dollar if he made three criminals behave themselves. It would be a piece of cake. In and out in under an hour, a big payday and he’d be set for quite some time. Enough time to drown in the bottle. He didn’t care whether he lived or died.  Obviously, no one else did either. No one would mourn his passing and that suited him just fine.

Nate was not a very nice man and never had been. Why did they think he’d change that fact just by working with them? He was the bastard that tried to put every single one of them in jail at one point or another.  He knew their pasts, what they could do with their skillsets, and knew when to push their buttons to get what he wanted, which often included breaking many laws and possibly a few bones.  A functioning alcoholic, the emphasis on functioning didn’t mean he couldn’t be a bastard.  It only meant he worked better with a bit of lubrication. He worked better not sober. He worked better when he wasn’t nice.

Push them away, keep them at arm’s length, make sure they knew who was boss. They weren’t friends, as he had told Eliot early on that first job.  They never would be. He wasn’t a nice man.  While Sophie pushed and pulled, coaxed and prodded, he realized that he never wanted to be nice.  What he could be was vengeful.  That was a better goal.  Give people the money back that they lost to an unscrupulous adversary.  Being nice had nothing to do with it.

Did they thaw his heart just a little that first year they were together?  He knew they worked like a well-oiled machine after a few months of tweaking.  They caught on to each other’s strengths and weaknesses. They wanted each other to succeed.  He orchestrated it all from his head. Better to not let them see what he really thought. Being a bastard was just the tip of the iceberg.

Telling Eliot to fuck off, pushing Hardison to his limits, making sure Parker got out at the very last minute, pushing Sophie away when she got too close, those were all signs of a not nice man. 

“You bastard. You almost blew that con and got Parker and Eliot hurt. When will you realize that it’s not always about who wins?”

Sophie just didn’t understand. Why did she think he did this in the first place?  Was it to be nice?  Their clients didn’t need nice, they needed vengeance.  They needed a black king, not a white knight. He thought that for quite a while, even when they pulled him in, made him part of whatever they were trying to create.  Until he hit rock bottom, shivering in some hard bed, hoping that someone put him out of his misery.  He wasn’t someone’s white knight or black king while he went through detox.  He was just a man with a problem.  He thought that would be what they wanted, what he wanted.  He was wrong.

Nate Ford wasn’t a very nice man and proved it that second year they were together. He pushed them sometimes beyond their limits.  He made them angry on plenty of occasions.  He planned cons too elaborate for them to complete, at least in his mind.  He didn’t fail though and kept on going, even after Sophie tried to pull him back.  He knew in the back of his mind that this streak of wins couldn’t sustain itself. Then they’d see how absolutely miserable and mean he really was. 

The epiphany hit, and yes it was an epiphany because Nate Ford still believed just a bit in karma, a higher power, because that higher power had knocked him down more times than he could pick himself up.  It had all gone to shit so fast, his head swam. He’d pushed Sophie one too many times, so she bailed to find herself.  He pushed Eliot and Parker and Hardison until they said enough. The funny thing is they didn’t leave though.  Sure, they were pissed at him, yelled at him, maybe wanted to even throw a few punches at him, but they didn’t leave.  They stayed.  The loyalty that they showed him, told him that there had to be something there.  They weren’t just in it for the money.

Parker had hit the nail on the head when she said they wanted Nate Ford back, the Nate Ford that helped people. Did that make him a nice person?  Nonsense.  Helping people didn’t make one nice.  It made one loyal and that was all he had at that moment.

The epiphany came when he sat at the dining table, tumbler set before him, drink poured by Jim Sterling of all people.  He’d give Nate a deal, let him go, let him continue with his life unscathed, but his team, Nate’s team, would go down and go to jail. It wasn’t their fault.  This scheme, this scam, was all Nate’s fault.  Sterling was giving him the coward’s way out. Save himself and not suffer the consequences. That definitely would make him the worst man on the planet.  It would make him that not nice man that he’d worked so hard to achieve.

Nate was a liar.  He’d lied to himself, to his team, to everyone around him.  All he had wanted to do was make a difference.  He certainly went about it in unorthodox ways, alternative revenue streams be damned.  He’d been shot, punched, threatened, but nothing compared to what was happening at that table right then.  His friend, former friend that was, wanted him to return to his former life, the one where he was so not a very nice man.  Nate couldn’t do it.  His family needed him.  He needed them.

He called Sophie in a last-ditch effort, to tell her how he actually felt, only it didn’t feel right.  The words just wouldn’t come.  His plan of action, one that would most likely have him ending up in jail, was his plan M.  It was the only way he saw it working.  As he breathed in and out, holding the phone that he just used to contact Sophie to tell her what he was going to do, he decided right then and there he had to do better, and that first step would be to admit what he was.

He was a man with flaws so deep and severe, he really didn’t understand why and how they all even stood by him.  But it wasn’t just the job.  Parker wanted that Nate Ford back, the one that held them together by a string that first year.  That couldn’t be what Parker wanted.  She wanted a good man, one that was honest and true, one that fought the good fight, whether win or lose. She wanted something that he never thought he could be, until he sat on those stairs, phone in hand, calling them in after putting the comm back in, to tell them that it was safe.  That picture Sam had drawn, that he’d gone back to retrieve knowing that could be the only thing he could save from his former life, had jolted him just as much as Sterling showing up on his tail. 

Getting shot was not in the plan nor was having to face Sophie Devereaux in all her glory.  She’d come back to save his ass, but he didn’t need saving.  She had already done that just by showing her face just as his team had by backing him up.

His team, his family.  His family.  No one could take that away from him. To do better, he had to be better and by sacrificing himself, they all could walk free. 

If the bonus was knowing that Sophie finally realized that he needed her, then that was even better.  She’d heard most of his confession on the phone, although that wasn’t why she had come back. She was already on her way because there was no way she had gotten from Europe to Massachusetts that fast. He probably had Tara to thank for that, since he knew that the other woman had been reporting back to Sophie on his every move.

Nate Ford was still not a very nice man. He didn’t need to be a nice man. All he needed was his team, his family, to get him through the next minute, the next hour, the next day even. It would take him a few more years to realize that they’d never go away unintentionally, that they would stay loyal to the end, that they would love him just as he was. When he told them that he needed to make some changes, it just didn’t have to do with his status with Sophie.  The job was beginning to eat away at his soul, or what little he had left of it.  He needed to save that piece, that small piece that had survived childhood, that had survived his son dying. It was that small piece that made him get up in the morning, made him want to be a better man. That small piece survived, just barely, because of his family. They needed him, Sophie definitely needed him.

Nate Ford was still not a very nice man, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t try, if just for them.


End file.
